The Evolution of a Blog Post

Today we are going to discuss how three seemingly unrelated items influence the progression of a blog post from a simple discussion about keys, to another exploration of my bad habits: procrastination, laziness, messiness.

The three items:

1. A set of keys

2. A collection of lovely purses

3. Food that is, um, well past its prime

The progression:

I often write blog posts about random, everyday things and I use my experiences and surroundings as inspiration. Example: The Would You Like Your Receipt? post.

My keys were the initial inspiration for this post. See how many there are:

Now, it’s not an exorbitant amount of keys; however, the ratio of used keys to unused keys is a problem. There are a total of eleven keys. Five of them I use all the time. Two belong to doors I should no longer be opening, and four are mystery keys.

This one belongs to my husband’s old condo.

This one belongs to my mom’s old Subaru.

I was thinking I should get rid of the keys I don’t need, so that I don’t have to try to squish so many keys into my smallish purse. My blog post was going to be about why I hold on to all these unnecessary keys.

Here is where we have our first divergence: now I began to think about my purse.

Perhaps my purse was the problem and I should blog about that? I have a lovely collection of purses that I never use. When I was younger, I used to change my purse all the time, usually to match my outfit. Now it’s always the black one. Have I gotten so lazy that I can’t move my wallet from one purse to another?

The only purse I seem to carry now.

I gathered my purses to take the picture below and pondered the red one in the back. Now, that’s a much bigger purse. I could keep all my extraneous keys and have room more. Why get rid of keys, when I can make room for more?

Now, to the next divergence: I started looking through the purse for clues as to when it was last used and found something startling – food that was well past its prime. And so now my blog post is about what happens to food when left in a purse too long.

Very stale pumpkin bread, a bag of almonds and walnuts, and two unidentifiable pieces of fruit.

I really can’t say how long it has been since I used this purse, but judging from the fruit it’s been more than a couple of days. The pumpkin bread is homemade, dating back to fall 2012.

After close inspection, this was identified as an apple. The sticker tells me it was a honey crisp apple. If you look closely, you can see the tip of the stem in the top right corner.

I wanted to call this a strawberry, based on its size. However, strawberries usually don’t come with a sticker on them. And I would never just carry a loose strawberry in my purse. That would be gross. So, I’m pretty sure this is another petrified, rotten, moldy apple.

So, similar to many of my other posts, this post has dissolved into another example of my lack of organization, cleanliness and motivation. Anyone want some almonds?

🙂 I tried very hard to be a girly girl once with having a few purses (or handbags as we call them over here – purse is usually just for keeping money and cards in) but now I just have one over the shoulder type bag which is usually full of random glittery eyeliners and bright red lipstick, antacid tablets and tissues and Always Ultra.
As for the keys, I have probably got more keyrings than actual keys. One Lego Ewok, One Lega Wonder Woman, a Lego Tag, a bottle opener, then two front door keys (one lock that we never use) and the garage key but I also have one broken key on there to remind me not to try too hard to turn the key if it is stuck.
I can’t say I’ve ever found mummified fruit in my bag though, but usually gross sticky sweets out of their wrappers stuck to the inner lining…
However I have been cleaning out the kitchen cupboards today and have thrown away a lot of out of date things, like ice cream sauces, porridge and very old spices (not a vintage aftershave.)

I have to admit though that as a child I adored keys. My Dad used to have this little set of drawers in the garage and one of them had all these old keys in it. Like for old padlocks, old house keys, old garage door keys. I ended up collecting them all and putting them on one keyring. I even had a key to some hot wheels car.

I am too lazy to switch purses so I only use one (except for a tiny purse I use when traveling). Always black so that it matches everything. But every now and then, I see one in a vibrant color I think would be fun to have. And then I walk on past, never the adventurous one…

oh my gosh…I live the same way! Both in blogging style-diversion-and procrastination. On the airplane the other day, I was digging in the pocket of the seat in front of me. Not sure why, just was. I found an old tea biscuit–I offered it to my husband, he declined. Thank you for making me laugh today!

Whatever about being disorganised, you certainly have a gift for making unusual connections…. I think you could double back and come up with something to go with the ‘two are for doors I should no longer be opening’…. a good line!

I’m definitely with you in regard to having tons of keys that I carry around all the time. I use maybe two or three of them at the most. Honestly, I look like a prison guard with the amount of keys I carry around!

The fruit thing is just gross – didn’t you notice the rotting smell in your purse? 🙂

It’s weird. I know I’ll probably never use any of these keys again, but I can’t get myself to remove them.

It is gross, but no there was no smell. Our house is really small so we store a lot of things in the basement, like extra coats and some of my purses. And I never smelled a thing. And when I finally found them, they didn’t smell at all. It was weird. We’re lucky we don’t have very many pests in Colorado. I think that is why I’m so lackadaisical sometimes.

You have certainly found a new way of preserving fruit! And why do all key rings have so many keys – which I’m always too cautious to take off?

Apart from the odd grape that rolled behind the fridge, or a stray M&M which I found under the table (which strangely do not age at all), I haven’t discovered too many forgotten foodstuffs. A colleague found a bowl of cereal under a pile of contracts in the office once which we thought was six months old!

I am always finding money in my purses, and it does seem like a windfall at the time! I tend to put my ‘vacation’ purses away when I return home from holiday… then when I pull them out for the next vacation, there’s generally money squirrelled away in one of the purse pockets. Hmm… maybe I should go look through one of those purses right now; I could use an extra $20 today!

Ha-Ha-Ha-ha-ha, you made me laugh and I’m sitting here at my desk at work and not even supposed to be reading this kind of thing. I love that you could still read the honey crisp sticker. Of course you wouldn’t notice the smell, apples don’t smell bad. Now if it had been a bannana . . .

Hope you and yer cuz have fun at your writing conference – from another post?

Of course, almonds and walnuts never go bad. right? I gave up purses a long time ago, I just found that I carted around way more stuff than I needed to. Money, keys, lighter. that leaves a spare pocket in my jeans for the occasional “extra”. I think it has been so long that if I tried again I would load that puppy up with all my “important purse stuff” and leave it the first place I sat down. So now the joke is I have the most expensive purse ever. a 2005 Pontiac Bonneville. It’s so roomy to boot!